Last year, after several years of having a weak back, something snapped and I now can't bend down or lift things without planning. It doesn't always go wrong but it is a risk do to these things.
Things I have trouble with sometimes include getting dressed, getting things out of low drawers, moving large books, and standing up for a whole day.
If I try these things and it goes badly I trigger some stabbing pain that makes it impossible to move.
This is kind of scary as I worry I will be stuck. It also hurts a lot.
After 10 months of some kind of, as yet elusive, back pain, seven physio appointments, four GP appointments, two occupational health appointments and a disability advisor, I am now seeing an NHS physiotherapist. I don't know my prognosis.
However, here are the good things the back pain has brought me.
1. I have got better at asking people for help
2. This has given me the chance to deepen my relationships and appreciate people’s kindness
3. While my overall fitness is down, the strength of my abdominal muscles has increased through daily exercise. This means I may one day be able to do some circus skills.
4. Being unable to exercise has reinforced its importance to me, and I am more likely to keep it up when I can exercise again. This will improve my overall health and lifespan.
5. Not drinking due to painkillers has saved me money, meaning I have to work less and can do more art. It also prevents me worrying about money and gives me more free time when I am not hungover.
6. Wearing a back brace distorts my fat and body so much that I feel very slim and cool when I take it off.
7. People have been so kind.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 March 2015
Sunday, 4 August 2013
work sucks, as if you didn't know.
work sucks, as if you didn't know. I don't know how we did it, but we slipped and made a system where you give five days to get two. Yeah, on paper, on contract, it's only 35 / 168 signed away - as if anyone works 9 to 5 anymore. Oh Dusty, I'd kill for 9-5. It's 9-6, 9-7, 9-9 and only up.
but beyond that there's more, the trimmings eating in - the morning hauling up, the mute commute, the rare, endangered lunchhour for paying bills and sending packets. The team drinks, the gym because you don't have time to walk outside, the late night supermarkets where you buy what's left after the stay at home parents have descended for their locust offsprint, the trains that take their time back because work is what matters - before you're home again with nothing more to give.
Crashed on the sofa with your other life waiting, looking at you accusingly, and no appetite for anything but telly pap. I can't be an inspired artist in the two hours before bed, even when I force myself to stay awake because I don't want to give in and abandon consciousness until the next drudgeday starts.
occasional midweek oasis when i steal in the bars, the nightclasses, the fights, the gigs, the music the . i overdo it, up and out at the sniff of real life, and the morning doesn't matter, until it does, with the shame and the sickness and the excuses to visit anywhere that's not fluorescent lit and consensus airconditioned. moanday morning, swearing off, no more life except in designated living zones.
The big glimmering weekend, the mountains beckoning all slogging weeklong trudgedays finally to the foothills of friday nights, I barrel into the fresh springs, and drink and drink to lose the inhibitions i nurture in cubefarms to regain fringe views and political heat and forget that 54 little hours later i'll be waiting to have my head held under again.
moanday
screwsday
grudgeday
trudgeday
cryday
What a way to make a living and not live.
___________________________
more things i wrote and didn't post at the time. I need to work on that, huh.
but beyond that there's more, the trimmings eating in - the morning hauling up, the mute commute, the rare, endangered lunchhour for paying bills and sending packets. The team drinks, the gym because you don't have time to walk outside, the late night supermarkets where you buy what's left after the stay at home parents have descended for their locust offsprint, the trains that take their time back because work is what matters - before you're home again with nothing more to give.
Crashed on the sofa with your other life waiting, looking at you accusingly, and no appetite for anything but telly pap. I can't be an inspired artist in the two hours before bed, even when I force myself to stay awake because I don't want to give in and abandon consciousness until the next drudgeday starts.
occasional midweek oasis when i steal in the bars, the nightclasses, the fights, the gigs, the music the . i overdo it, up and out at the sniff of real life, and the morning doesn't matter, until it does, with the shame and the sickness and the excuses to visit anywhere that's not fluorescent lit and consensus airconditioned. moanday morning, swearing off, no more life except in designated living zones.
The big glimmering weekend, the mountains beckoning all slogging weeklong trudgedays finally to the foothills of friday nights, I barrel into the fresh springs, and drink and drink to lose the inhibitions i nurture in cubefarms to regain fringe views and political heat and forget that 54 little hours later i'll be waiting to have my head held under again.
screwsday
grudgeday
trudgeday
cryday
What a way to make a living and not live.
___________________________
more things i wrote and didn't post at the time. I need to work on that, huh.
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Nowhere Notimes (part 3)
Oh
my gosh wrestling is fun, and the Northern boys are really giving it
their all: but it's hard to be half hearted on a trampoline.
__________________________
Chris asks me if I'd spend 10 minutes digging. I say sure, but I know I'm going back to painting my beloved toilets with Natalie afterwards.
I
go to join the guys - a team of 4 working to fill in a trench.
It's mid afternoon and rather hot in the desert, and there's a lot of
dust that needs to be shifted to fill that space. It's also booty short
day.
So the first thing visitors to the festival see is a row of us shifting dust and flashing flesh. People shout encouragement and ask when our calendar will be out as they drive past.
Goku welcomes newcomers 'to Nowhere, the festival of the working class', and you can see a flicker of concern pass across the hippies' faces when they think that maybe they've signed up for a week of digging holes rsather than hedonism. Naturally, we don't reassure them.
So the first thing visitors to the festival see is a row of us shifting dust and flashing flesh. People shout encouragement and ask when our calendar will be out as they drive past.
Goku welcomes newcomers 'to Nowhere, the festival of the working class', and you can see a flicker of concern pass across the hippies' faces when they think that maybe they've signed up for a week of digging holes rsather than hedonism. Naturally, we don't reassure them.
The
hole never seems to be full and we're stuck into the repetition of
digging now, with our hands doing the action despite the blisters
coming. I'm getting tired, and these guys were digging long before I
came to help out. The sun pounds down, but we don't want to leave the
job undone so we count off. Just fifty shovelfuls more. Another fifty.
Another.
And eventually, the hole is filled and we have saved at least
two hippies from breaking themselves falling down holes. We are working
class heroes, we tell each other, and are rewarded with a cold beer and
an extra helping of tomatoes at dinner.
__________________________
We're drinking martini on top of the toolshed, but becuase I'm up there with French contingent, olives are provided.
__________________________
I touch Raven's arm and ask where he got his scars, stupidly not remembering that it might be a painful question. He tells me about
getting run over in Thailand, being broken and unconscious for weeks and
his mum choosing to leave him there in the country he loved rather than
fly him back to Ireland. And he tells me about his healing and the care
he had from friends and strangers there, showing me a bracelet made of
tiny knots in single strand cotton thread. Each one is a day his friend fasted and
prayed for him.
It's a personal story he told me
and I feel like I pried. I joke he's a cyborg now (though technically he
is). He smiles and chats but there seems to be sadness under there.
I think about robots and taking
on someone else's pain selflessly. Would machines do that for us? I remember the eastern art which is
all over the place, and draw a golden robot on a lotus.
For an hour I'm lost in sepia
markers and watercolour, and people tell me what I'm doing is good.
Normally my art is private, because who would be interested to see it? But here they can look if the want, and apparently they do. Raven likes it so I
cut it out of my sketchbook and give it to him.
A funny sort of gift; feels like it was never really mine
anyway. A product of the dust.
I like to think of it on his wall in Ireland, a piece of me in a place I've never been.
__________________________
"Those are the most beautiful toilets we've
ever had. They're like us - pretty on the outside, but underneath
seriously fucked up."
__________________________
There's a bearded cowboy sat on the living room art car I like the look of, so I climb on up and pounce on him. He seems happy about that, and he's in
assless chaps and goes by 'assless chaps' as a name, so that's easy. On
his other side is the Weimar styled cabaret host I spent the early evening appreciating. who regaled us with his
opus 'baby shark' earlier.
Balloons fly over us, tethered to the car and buffeted into our faces by the wind.
Arkem starts up 'balls in my face, balls in my
face' and the rhythm is like a nursery rhyme or a train.. Balls in my
face, I join in, and we chant it out over the dark desert filled with
revellers like stumbling glow worms.
Balls in my face all over the place running out of space it's a disgrace all these balls in my balls in my balls in my face
__________________________
I'm dressed as a fusion of
warriors from across the world, in a chain mail bikini with my body painted in
blue swirls like Celtic woad, my face in moko, my hair in a Mohican. This is how I want to look.
___________________________
SCARING IS CARING
__________________________
Nicholas Immaculate, resident camp king of decor, is having difficulty with his headpiece - it won't adhere because of the heat, and he can't possibly be seen without something dramatic on his head. To avoid having an undecorated head, he asks me if I'll do his face paint as I 'am the only one he'll trust with it', concerned about being attacked by floral hippy designs.
I am insanely flattered, but also nervous, because this man has taste.
He sits on the floor and I paint his head in candy neon stripes and swirls - he enjoys the feeling of the brush on his head and we talk about his house and boyfriend and upcoming moves.
__________________________
I'm drinking cappuccino made by Martin outside his camp's cottage, discussing alternative financial methods for government funding beyond the issuing of bonds. Martin is trying earnestly to stop making coffee for people, but cannot say no to a pretty young man.
_________________________
I didn't know Joey, but I fucking hope that if I go before my friends, they write my name on everyone, drink to me, and insist that my favourite song gets played 3 times in every set.
_________________________
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Nowhere Notimes (part 2)
The pirates have taken their ship and their cannon and gone raiding. I'm in the kitchen washing potatoes but I see them go, and I also see one of the guys from babysham pulling an Elmer Fudd and sneaking along with the signs from their camp while they left it unguarded.
_______________________________
I'm talking to a drag queen called Jessica behind the Italian camp's luxury. I say I don't know what a lapdance actually involved, and she says she's never given one, so we rectify that.
_______________________________
The pirates get back and a big roar goes up when they realise their signs are missing. I come out just in time to see a tricorned and gilded posse advancing with their ship towards the Pervy Whims cottage, now boldly displaying the Pillage Village sign and with its garden filled with gay men, exuberantly breasted women, and sympathisers swinging their handbags menacingly before launching them in a volley.
_______________________________
A couple are saying their wedding vows under the main stage in the Middle of Nowhere. This community means a lot to people. I sit near the back with my new friend Jack. #I could never get married', I say to him. He asks why and I say I was in a relationship for five years and I was so happy, and I thought it was great and perfect.. and it ended and I'd been so wrong about the whole of it. And I cry quietly and my voice breaks up and I'm apologising as he says 'Come here, you', pulls me over for a hug and holds me until it's bearable again.
_______________________________
The pirates get past the wall of handbags and discover that the happiest camp in the world are pretty good with their tools and have screwed their stolen signs to their territory. They are a bit nonplussed until they remember they came armed and make with a shower of ballpool balls, cutlasses and jets of water.
_______________________________
I'm feeling the heat and ask for easy, shaded work in the afternoon. Chris leads me to the gate where Natalie is painting, and says I can cut her stencils. She sketches some evil grinning little sperm and I cut them from tetrapaks so we can spray them on. The gate is designed by Ellen and spreads like a red cone, opening as a square-fronted temple and tapering to purple and pink drapery. The theme of the event is Rebirth Earth, and the gate will begin like Indian temple and finish as a vulva.
As me and Natalie talk it becomes clear we have similar phallic, curlicued visions for the temple freize, and we roller and draw the pieces together and they match. It's a novel experience for me to work with anyone artistic, let alone someone whose lines go the way mine do.
_______________________________
Krampouz, the French camp, are doling out exquisitely thin proper french crepe. I eat mine with chocolate from teh biggest jar of nutella I have ever seen while wearing a leatherman style peaked cap I find around, and they let me borrow it to wear for the evening. So I paint on a moustache and strut around.
_______________________________
There is a rope bondage jam and I always have more to learn, so I head up to the camp and partner with a beautiful lost boy with orange stripes on his cheeks. He's never been roped before, and he's so young: I tie his arm across his chest like a patriot and his other arm behind him, and check in with him every other knot to see how he's feeling. He seems to like it and his friends laugh in surprise to see him so bound up. I think he looks beautiful, and then I let him tie me.
I hope he keeps exploring.
_______________________________
Babycham has a cabaret and Megs comes on stage and sings Minnie the Moocher acapella. Her voice is like granulated honey and she stomps and owns that dusty stage.
_______________________________
I've been drinking and dancing all day but I don't want to stop and so I'm dancing like a mad thing, jumping up and down and climbing platforms and doing some burlesque of pole dancing on a rough squarecut pole. As people wander into camp friendly puppy me goes over and asks them to dance with me, I want to befriend everyone and make them happy. 'Nah,' says one girl, 'It's funny just watching you.'
________________________________
I get hold of the laptop and put on the Cramps I've been jonesing for all week. I dance and mouth 'tomorrow we'll fell like we've been hit by a truck'.. He smiles and drags out in a voice like the purr of an engine 'It's sooooo hard to imagine you as a psychobilly fan.'
________________________________
Now, I wanna be face-to-face.
_______________________________
I'm talking to a drag queen called Jessica behind the Italian camp's luxury. I say I don't know what a lapdance actually involved, and she says she's never given one, so we rectify that.
_______________________________
The pirates get back and a big roar goes up when they realise their signs are missing. I come out just in time to see a tricorned and gilded posse advancing with their ship towards the Pervy Whims cottage, now boldly displaying the Pillage Village sign and with its garden filled with gay men, exuberantly breasted women, and sympathisers swinging their handbags menacingly before launching them in a volley.
_______________________________
A couple are saying their wedding vows under the main stage in the Middle of Nowhere. This community means a lot to people. I sit near the back with my new friend Jack. #I could never get married', I say to him. He asks why and I say I was in a relationship for five years and I was so happy, and I thought it was great and perfect.. and it ended and I'd been so wrong about the whole of it. And I cry quietly and my voice breaks up and I'm apologising as he says 'Come here, you', pulls me over for a hug and holds me until it's bearable again.
_______________________________
The pirates get past the wall of handbags and discover that the happiest camp in the world are pretty good with their tools and have screwed their stolen signs to their territory. They are a bit nonplussed until they remember they came armed and make with a shower of ballpool balls, cutlasses and jets of water.
_______________________________
I'm feeling the heat and ask for easy, shaded work in the afternoon. Chris leads me to the gate where Natalie is painting, and says I can cut her stencils. She sketches some evil grinning little sperm and I cut them from tetrapaks so we can spray them on. The gate is designed by Ellen and spreads like a red cone, opening as a square-fronted temple and tapering to purple and pink drapery. The theme of the event is Rebirth Earth, and the gate will begin like Indian temple and finish as a vulva.
As me and Natalie talk it becomes clear we have similar phallic, curlicued visions for the temple freize, and we roller and draw the pieces together and they match. It's a novel experience for me to work with anyone artistic, let alone someone whose lines go the way mine do.
_______________________________
Krampouz, the French camp, are doling out exquisitely thin proper french crepe. I eat mine with chocolate from teh biggest jar of nutella I have ever seen while wearing a leatherman style peaked cap I find around, and they let me borrow it to wear for the evening. So I paint on a moustache and strut around.
_______________________________
There is a rope bondage jam and I always have more to learn, so I head up to the camp and partner with a beautiful lost boy with orange stripes on his cheeks. He's never been roped before, and he's so young: I tie his arm across his chest like a patriot and his other arm behind him, and check in with him every other knot to see how he's feeling. He seems to like it and his friends laugh in surprise to see him so bound up. I think he looks beautiful, and then I let him tie me.
I hope he keeps exploring.
_______________________________
Babycham has a cabaret and Megs comes on stage and sings Minnie the Moocher acapella. Her voice is like granulated honey and she stomps and owns that dusty stage.
_______________________________
I've been drinking and dancing all day but I don't want to stop and so I'm dancing like a mad thing, jumping up and down and climbing platforms and doing some burlesque of pole dancing on a rough squarecut pole. As people wander into camp friendly puppy me goes over and asks them to dance with me, I want to befriend everyone and make them happy. 'Nah,' says one girl, 'It's funny just watching you.'
________________________________
I get hold of the laptop and put on the Cramps I've been jonesing for all week. I dance and mouth 'tomorrow we'll fell like we've been hit by a truck'.. He smiles and drags out in a voice like the purr of an engine 'It's sooooo hard to imagine you as a psychobilly fan.'
________________________________
Now, I wanna be face-to-face.
Nowhere Notimes (part 1)
The buses have arrived and I
rush down with the crowd to meet them. I don't know what I'm doing but
I'm genuinely thrilled to meet a new batch of people who I trust to be
cool, show them how excited I am and show them what we have built for
them.
__________________________________
On the ukelele it says 'this machine kills diminuitive fascists'. __________________________________
The firespinning pit is opened up. I've had a few drinks but I've been spinning years, and fire is irresistible.. I pick up a heavy staff and realise The billowing cotton skirt I'm wearing is incompatible with fire, so I strip it off and spin in my pants. The area is surrounded by leds and onlookers chatting and half watching. I step in and let the familiar sensations of shifting weight and momentum, and the zip of roaring fire past my head, take over. I only hit myself in the leg once.
__________________________________
Ginger Dave *is* hotter than Malaka.
__________________________________
After a day at the presses working on the newsheet, Abi is spinning feel-good soul and rock and roll to the Werkhaus. Tristan tells us proudly 'That's my wife. Isn't she something? Go, Abi, go!' Wearing a dust-covered duster, Til (who's been working on lighting all week) takes my hands and we spin out into my best attempt at a swing dance. I don't know the moves but spinning round like kids in a playground and being whirled into twirls and passing over and under and weaving round hands is really fun, and whenever I go the wrong way I just dissolve into laughter, because I can't stop smiling and everything feels golden.
___________________________________
"This is exactly the right place in the world for me to be right now", I message home after a first day working until I'm tired with sexy, energetic, practical dreamers, sick, helpful cynics with genuine smiles.
__________________________________
It's Pride and we take to the playa dust to process after the converted-caravan pirate ship as it bears along the Samba crew, decked out in rainbows for the occasion. I can't say no to the samba beat and I bounce along beside and behind for an hour or so, wearing blue body paint and chainmail. We finish up at Ubertown and a DJ breaks out a mix of mid-nineties cheese from the back of the radio and speaker studded art car. It's golden hour as the sun sets over the rocky mountains surrounding us, and the crowd try to remember the moves to the macarena. Eventually, pirates, post-apocalyptics, dusty freaks and holiday makers wiggle their hips, jump, clap and turn ninety degrees as one, with not a hint of post-modern Shoreditch irony to be seen.
___________________________________
YOU CAN'T *MAKE* ME STOP DANCING, I write on whatever I can find. ___________________________________
I'm delivering the paper to smiling, welcoming faces at each camp I visit in a desert-blow parody of surburbia. 'We don't have paper boys and girls, we have paper freaks' comments someone.. it hadn't even occurred to me that my outfit was outlandish. Pinstripe shorts, red fishnet stockings, boots, 10cm long spike collar and a cargo-net top is what I'd wear normally, given free choice.
__________________________________
All is full of dust and love.
__________________________________
The last day starts with a hot mess served by an unnaturally cheery Nurse and a team with pink facepaint lipstick smeared round their mouths. It's lush and accompanied by whiskey and Annika declaiming 'First proper food I've had all week. I don't know who's running this kitchen but they're shit. Proper food at last.'
Annika runs the kitchen. She raids our ice freezer for bottles of booze people have stored there and declares them destined for punch.
'It's not stealing, it's non-consensual sharing!'
She aims the judge at unsuspecting mouths.
'Do you consent to this punch?'
'Yes...?'
'NO! THIS IS NON-CONSENSUAL PUNCH.'
And whatever, we drink, and the punch keeps being racked up, and Werkhaus has a party going with vodka and juice on ice at fucking 10 o clock on the last day because we can. And also because we can we hijack the music and put on some non-electronic music. Those of us who love our rock smile as the real instruments make the air shake just like they did when they were recorded.
'I didn't realise how much I missed guitars', says Natalie. Fuck it's good to hear guitars again.
You've gotta FIGHT. for your RIGHT. to PAAAAAAAAAAAAAR-TAY!
__________________________________
I lose my heart on the burning sand.
__________________________________
On the ukelele it says 'this machine kills diminuitive fascists'. __________________________________
The firespinning pit is opened up. I've had a few drinks but I've been spinning years, and fire is irresistible.. I pick up a heavy staff and realise The billowing cotton skirt I'm wearing is incompatible with fire, so I strip it off and spin in my pants. The area is surrounded by leds and onlookers chatting and half watching. I step in and let the familiar sensations of shifting weight and momentum, and the zip of roaring fire past my head, take over. I only hit myself in the leg once.
__________________________________
Ginger Dave *is* hotter than Malaka.
__________________________________
After a day at the presses working on the newsheet, Abi is spinning feel-good soul and rock and roll to the Werkhaus. Tristan tells us proudly 'That's my wife. Isn't she something? Go, Abi, go!' Wearing a dust-covered duster, Til (who's been working on lighting all week) takes my hands and we spin out into my best attempt at a swing dance. I don't know the moves but spinning round like kids in a playground and being whirled into twirls and passing over and under and weaving round hands is really fun, and whenever I go the wrong way I just dissolve into laughter, because I can't stop smiling and everything feels golden.
___________________________________
"This is exactly the right place in the world for me to be right now", I message home after a first day working until I'm tired with sexy, energetic, practical dreamers, sick, helpful cynics with genuine smiles.
__________________________________
It's Pride and we take to the playa dust to process after the converted-caravan pirate ship as it bears along the Samba crew, decked out in rainbows for the occasion. I can't say no to the samba beat and I bounce along beside and behind for an hour or so, wearing blue body paint and chainmail. We finish up at Ubertown and a DJ breaks out a mix of mid-nineties cheese from the back of the radio and speaker studded art car. It's golden hour as the sun sets over the rocky mountains surrounding us, and the crowd try to remember the moves to the macarena. Eventually, pirates, post-apocalyptics, dusty freaks and holiday makers wiggle their hips, jump, clap and turn ninety degrees as one, with not a hint of post-modern Shoreditch irony to be seen.
___________________________________
YOU CAN'T *MAKE* ME STOP DANCING, I write on whatever I can find. ___________________________________
I'm delivering the paper to smiling, welcoming faces at each camp I visit in a desert-blow parody of surburbia. 'We don't have paper boys and girls, we have paper freaks' comments someone.. it hadn't even occurred to me that my outfit was outlandish. Pinstripe shorts, red fishnet stockings, boots, 10cm long spike collar and a cargo-net top is what I'd wear normally, given free choice.
__________________________________
All is full of dust and love.
__________________________________
The last day starts with a hot mess served by an unnaturally cheery Nurse and a team with pink facepaint lipstick smeared round their mouths. It's lush and accompanied by whiskey and Annika declaiming 'First proper food I've had all week. I don't know who's running this kitchen but they're shit. Proper food at last.'
Annika runs the kitchen. She raids our ice freezer for bottles of booze people have stored there and declares them destined for punch.
'It's not stealing, it's non-consensual sharing!'
She aims the judge at unsuspecting mouths.
'Do you consent to this punch?'
'Yes...?'
'NO! THIS IS NON-CONSENSUAL PUNCH.'
And whatever, we drink, and the punch keeps being racked up, and Werkhaus has a party going with vodka and juice on ice at fucking 10 o clock on the last day because we can. And also because we can we hijack the music and put on some non-electronic music. Those of us who love our rock smile as the real instruments make the air shake just like they did when they were recorded.
'I didn't realise how much I missed guitars', says Natalie. Fuck it's good to hear guitars again.
You've gotta FIGHT. for your RIGHT. to PAAAAAAAAAAAAAR-TAY!
__________________________________
I lose my heart on the burning sand.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)